The FASB is proposing that materiality be considered a legal concept for deciding what information should be in financial statement footnotes. Several companies have told the FASB that they like the proposal, although audit firms seem less sure. For their part, investors have sharply criticized the proposal and believe it will deny them important information for making informed investment decisions.Read Full Article →

Members of the FASB's main advisory group stopped short of asking the FASB to begin a standard-setting project to define common non-GAAP measurements, but several members said requiring more information about how companies arrive at the metrics would be helpful. The discussion comes at a time when the SEC is paying close attention to the proliferation of non-GAAP measures in company financial statements.Read Full Article →

The FASB has released a proposal aimed at improving the information businesses disclose about the estimates and assumptions used to determine the fair values of assets and liabilities. The proposal eliminates some existing requirements, changes others, and adds three new requirements.Read Full Article →

A FASB proposal to simplify two narrow areas of equity method accounting yielded mixed support. The comment letters rejected a proposed elimination of the accounting for the difference between an investment's cost and the investor's proportionate share of the net assets of the investment holding. The accounting board did receive support for a planned amendment to eliminate the requirement that when an investment qualifies for the equity method because of an increase in the level of ownership, an investor must adjust the investment, results of operations, and retained earnings retroactively as if the equity method had been in use in previous periods.Read Full Article →

As businesses prepare to implement the FASB and IASB's sweeping new revenue recognition standards, many companies expect questions to continue emerging about the implementation process, even though the FASB and IASB have attempted to address the biggest issues involved with the necessary changes to financial reporting systems. The boards have not scheduled a new meeting of the special Transition Resource Group (TRG), which was set up to deal with questions about the revenue standards. But they want to keep it functioning and be prepared to respond to new questions that may arise as the 2018 effective date nears.Read Full Article →

The FASB plans to publish by the end of the year an update to U.S. GAAP that a divided board believes will make targeted improvements to current accounting. The update will become effective for public companies in 2018.Read Full Article →